Last week, in In Re Roslin Institute, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that cloned cattle, sheep, pigs and goats are non-patent eligible subject matter under 35 USC § 101. While the result that these cloned animals cannot be patented may not be surprising, the basis for the court’s finding–that the claimed subject matter…

The European Commission has adopted new competition rules for the assessment of technology-transfer agreements. The revised Block Exemption Regulation for Technology-Transfer Agreements (EU) 316/2014 (“TTBER”), and the accompanying Guidelines (OJ, 2014/C 89/03) entered into force on May 1, 2014. The general structure and most of the provisions have in substance remained unchanged compared to the…

By ruling of 21 February 2014, the Court of Turin decided a case between the US corporation Rovi and a number of Italian consumers electronics manufacturers. These had produced / imported set-top-boxes equipped with Electronic Programme Guides (EPG) that allegedly made use of the Rovi EPG patents, although without being covered by the Rovi licensing scheme….

The Bolar exemption must be interpreted narrowly in order not to affect the patent holder’s exclusive rights. The privilege of the generic drug manufacturers who are allowed to conduct clinical trials in order to seek regulatory approval for their therapeutic products based on patented inventions does not apply to their third-party suppliers. Thus, manufacturing of…

Commercial Court number 5 of Barcelona recently handed down a judgment dated 28 March 2014 ordering a defendant to cease manufacturing and marketing coffee capsules that are compatible with Nespresso®’ s machines. The judgment also ordered the defendant to pay damages, namely, 107,641.35 euros plus costs to the patentee. One of the interesting issues discussed…

Preliminary injunctions are powerful weapons in patent infringement suits. A successful application – and sometimes even an unsuccessful application – for a preliminary injunction (“PI”) will often lead to an early resolution of litigation. Chinese law authorizes courts to issue PIs, either before or during an infringement action. As such, there are two kinds of…

In its recent decision “Communication Channel” (“Kommunikationskanal”) of 11 February 2014, docket, X ZR 107/12, the FCJ decided that the priority of an earlier application may be claimed if the technical instructions described there by means of an example or in other ways appear for the skilled person as an embodiment of the more general…

The messy case law from the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) on supplementary protection certificates (“SPC”) that protect “combinations” of pharmaceutical products has left many patentees that relied in good faith on the criteria laid down by the CJEU in the judgment of 16 September 1999, Case C-392/97 (“Farmitalia”) with patents whose…

The development of Herceptin (trastuzumab) in the late 1980s and 1990s is one of the most remarkable advances in the treatment of breast cancer. The story of the drug and its pioneer, the “velvet jackhammer”, Dennis Slamon, is neatly summarised in Siddhartha Mukherjee’s award winning novel: “The Emperor of All Maladies – a Biography of…